About the film
A Day is Not a Day
2022 | dir. Yto Barrada, two-channel film installation, 16mm film, colour, sound, 2 × 18 mins (loop)
In this film installation, Yto Barrada entwines a specialised visual vocabulary of age and decay with an exploration of motherhood, inheritance, and subjectivity. These forms, which often seem to accidentally refer to the history of modern art, actually describe fatigue and rot by processes that are imperceptible in real time. The footage was produced at two “weather acceleration” facilities across the US, in Miami and Phoenix. The purpose of these industrial labs is to simulate the effects of the sun in a condensed time frame in order to test the durability of consumer products and materials such as plastics, automotive and domestic parts, paints, and textiles against fading and corrosion. Workers share surreal fields and offices with machines, and it is the human eye that must be constantly calibrated as a tool of measurement. Barrada’s multidisciplinary work draws upon metaphor to emphasize the symbolic, political, and culturally specific context of abstract ideas and forms. She often presents standardised processes alongside their intensely personal ramifications. Here, colour is configured as a measurement of time and the implacable degradations of exposure, evoking rites of passage between the marvellous and the monstrous.
- : Photos by Benoît Peverelli & Nicolas Cottong
